Vera nods. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I just learned I’m nine weeks pregnant and decided I’m keeping the baby. Maybe ask me in a few months?”
She smiles, her eyes watery and pulls me in for a hug. Varun joins the affection circle and I know Dr. Sunita was right. At the end of the day, I have the most incredible support team and they’ll be here for me no matter what.
Six. Super sperm
Patrick
Exhaustion is my new name. Whoever decided the hockey matches had to be one day after the other, with barely any time in between to rest, needs to meet the end of my boot. Sure, winning all these games and getting closer to the end is rewarding, but I don’t like not having time to do other things. Like go watch Nina play or see my folks for more than five minutes at a time. I would really like to sleep for two weeks straight.
Lying in my bed, I stare at the ceiling and think about the tense match yesterday. Noise from the other apartments and our common area filter through, but I ignore all of it. At times like this, when our country pins all their hopes and dreams on us, it’s impossible not to build unnecessary rivalries. So on the pitch with the Brits, I was ready to take them down. They played hard, we played harder. Nothing was going to stop me from getting that medal. It would be silly to say the shootouts didn’t save us, because if it wasn’t for that, I’m not sure what the state of the game would have been.
The minute we got back to our apartment, I was in pain. The bone-tired, sleeping on uncomfortable beds kind of pain. I don’t always acknowledge that I’m one of the oldest members on the Indian field hockey team until everything starts to hurt. Our doctors and medics looked me over, gave me the all clear and I crawled into bed. We won the quarter finals and it takes us one step closer to a medal.
But I was too tired and too winded to do anything else.
Well, nothing physical anyway. My brain’s been annoyingly active for days. Just before I left for Paris, my agent sent me a request from the Indian Hockey Association?1 to coach one of the new teams in the League of Hockey Tournament?2. Much like the ICL, the LHT brings the best players together for a double round-robin?3 format and crowns one team the victor. Owned by folks in different cities, it’s the IHA’s attempt to get more people interested in the sport.
They invited me to be a part of a team a few years ago and I declined. As a professional athlete, there’s only so much free time I have in a year and I didn’t want to go from one tournament to the next. This year, they made the smart decision to invite me to train a team instead. Tamil Nadu finally has a team and they think I’d make a great coach. I’d probably be the only Indian hockey player coaching a team too.
I didn’t have an answer for Parth, my agent, before I left. Since getting to Paris, I’ve thought about it on and off, weighing the pros and cons of being a coach. I get to stay in Chennai and be closer to Elias, I get to be involved with the sport I love while still getting enough rest. And it keeps me in the same city as Tamara.
Fuck, shouldn’t have thought about her.
The night we shared has been on loop in my head. It takes serious restraint not to fist myself in the shower or when I’m alone in my room. That’s the effect she’s always had on me and it’s not going to change just because she hates me. The reason for which I still don’t know. It infuriates me that she chose to overlook my request to talk and jumped into fucking me instead. She even ignored my pleading voice note, but at least I know she kept it.
Being the supportive brother that he is, Elias has been hosting viewing parties for Nina’s and my games. He sends videos of everyone cheering us on or we do a quick FaceTime call before they wind up for the night. And every single time, I see Tamara in the background. The last few matches, she hasn’t been anywhere in sight. Don’t get me wrong, I love that Elias is getting along with Vera’s family and they adore him enough to spend an evening watching hockey or badminton with him. But I’m watching those videos for Tamara.
Closer to me in age and beautiful, Vera keeps Elias on his toes. I see how much they love each other. When he told me about his really hot one night stand during the ICL season and then how they were together, I was worried. My brother’s track record with girlfriends hasn’t been the best; he’s a softie who gets taken for granted. Clearly Vera’s the exception to all of it.
What would make me happy is if I could figure out why Tamara’s no longer in the videos. I was tempted to ask last night, but Elias, Vera and her family were too busy congratulating me to get a word in edgewise. I want to know if Tamara’s thinking about me like I’m thinking about her—all the fucking time.
“Dude—” Nihal, my best friend and captain of the Indian team, groans from his bed “—I had a nightmare you got a red card banning you from the rest of the games. Then we lost!”
I roll my eyes and ignore him. He’s one of my oldest friends and even though we joined the team together, he worked his ass off to get the captaincy while I was happy being his best player. He’s also overly dramatic. His wife constantly tells me to make sure he’s not losing his mind, but we both know it’s pointless.
“You’re not awake, are you?”
Smiling, I rest my hands on my stomach and continue staring at the ceiling.
“I’m gonna go check on the rest of the boys,” he finally says and I close my eyes as loud rustling fills the room. He knows I’m awake, but he’ll let me wallow on my own. We’ve known each other for so long and Nihal understands I often need alone time.
As he gets dressed and leaves, my mind wanders back to yesterday. Dev, one of our midfielders, got carded minutes into the game and we had to play with his substitute. While the kid wasn’t bad, we haven’t trained with him enough to build a flow. We got the win, but it was stressful. Nihal almost got carded in the process, thankfully we stopped him before he could go completely apeshit on the referee.
So his nightmare is valid. I’ve gotten into trouble in Paris a few times, none of them warranting a red card, but pretty close. I know all it takes is one wrong move, one tiny fight and it would change the course of our medal journey.
Especially now since we’re one match away from securing the big win.
My phone pings from the floor, where I left it before I climbed into bed. Groaning considering I have to get up, I let it continue to ping. If it was urgent, they’d call. I stretch my arms over my head, my toes doing the same. For all the complaints we had about the cardboard beds when we got here, they’ve been relatively comfortable. What they’re not is meant for people over six feet. As someone who sleeps on their back, it’s annoying to have my feet hang over the edge.
I swing my legs over the side and pick up my phone. There’s a bunch of texts in the team group chat about breakfast and practice, the family chat has photographs Nina sent and a few from my therapist. I missed my last two sessions due to time zones and gruelling practices. More than that, I’m not in the mood to talk.
Ten years ago, I had a breakdown. We’d just won the gold at the Asian Games, and the minute I walked through the front door of my parents’ home, I was a mess. I couldn’t breathe, I was shaking so hard I couldn’t be held down. Tears were streaming down my face and by the time they’d gotten me to the hospital, I was dead to the world. The GP diagnosed the breakdown as a panic attack and brought in Dominic Varkey. Since then my life has been an endless series of counselling sessions, medication I hate with a passion and more panic attacks I can’t control.
All that aside, Dom helped me navigate the shitstorm of my life. Over the years we’ve narrowed down my triggers to a few things, hockey being one of them. Not the sport in general, but the fear of what would happen if I lost it all. Until very recently, I haven’t thought about retiring. I’m inching closer to forty and very few athletes stay on national teams at that point in their lives. Walking away with my head held high is the ideal way to do this, but that means leaving the sport I was born to play behind. And I’m not ready for it yet.
Now I don’t have panic attacks, I fall apart quietly after days of holding it together.
